Cross-cultural Marriage Series Part 2: Pick a language, any language

"Dil" means "language" in Turkish

Moonpie was nice enough to contribute the picture to the left to this post. She's so advanced. She is already bilingual as evidenced by her agile switching between “Baba” and “Dada” (no “Mama”? Really?) In a funny twist, “mama” is Turkish baby talk for “food”, so that could function really well for her. But no “mama” yet.

Anyway, I love that we have more than one language in which to communicate. Probably the most common question that we get asked is “Which language do you speak at home?” The answer truly is both! We go back and forth and back again. Sometimes we have conversations where I speak English and he speaks Turkish, and sometimes we have conversations where I speak Turkish and he speaks English. Sometimes we both speak English, then switch to Turkish, and the other way around. Now, right about now some of you are probably feeling really sorry for Moonpie to be growing up in this muddled linguistic environment, but kids almost always figure it out and do just fine. “They” say (whoever “they” is) that bilingual kids generally talk later, but catch up and surpass their peers in three or so years. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Here is a typical phone conversation:

Me: Merhaba

Him: Merhaba, nasilsin?

Me: Oh, I’m fine. Sen?

Him: Iyiyim ben de. Ne var ne yok?

Me: Did you take the car today?

Him: Yeah, I did. Were you going to go somewhere?

Me: IKEA’ya gitmeye dusunuyordum but that’s ok. It’s not urgent.

Him: Ok, yeah, I’ll leave it tomorrow.

Me: Tamam. Optum.

Him: Love you

Yes, you see IKEA in there. I love IKEA here. It’s a bastion of normal products at normal prices, a stronghold of plain and simple in a wide open field with glitter and oversized and overpriced ready to attack you from every side.

Compare:

     

 








 and

Anyway, this was a post about language. We use both. I love it.